Moonage Daydream

Epic and opulent like the man's life and career, "Moonage Daydream" splashes a kaleidoscope of sounds and colors celebrating David Bowie's legacy. Eschewing the traditional chronological narrative director Brett Morgen with excellent editing paints a collage of images and music using live gigs, music videos and interviews throughout Bowie's time in the limelight ornamenting them with clips from films and acted scenes. Bowie comes across as handsome, intelligent and articulate as he expresses himself conveying his one of a kind talent. I would have preferred a traditional kind of documentary to set the basics on what made Bowie great. The loose style of the film barely reveals the man's importance except for fans. Clocking in at over two hours long the way the film is made leads to tediousness and slow parts which does this fascinating and eclectic artist a disservice. No surprise the great music buoys this up from start to finish. Timely and a fitting tribute "Moonage Daydream" is one for fans and to those who want to know why back in the day Rock was everything.

As a huge Bowie fan I really wanted to like this.

Unfortunately the movie is quite flawed:

• asynchronous storyline or not? Footage from different eras are mixed throughout the movie, but the director is also trying to tell a story of different periods.

• focus on only 3 periods only. The 3 periods in the storyline are basically Ziggy/ Aladin Sane, Berlin & Commercial 80's. Nothing about pre-Ziggy, soul period (young Americans), or after '85 (1.outside, tin Machine, hours, reality/heathen, the quiet period after heart attack that nobody really knows anything about, or comeback/ next Day/ Blackstar/ death. The movie is 2,5 hours long, so you would expect some more attention to the lesser known work & periods.

• doubling footage. Some footage shown multiple times, like the elevators in Japan. Why? Is there not more different footage available?

• lack of new footage: many scenes already shown in multiple Bowie documentaries, e.g. Amstel Hotel and the interview with the English bloke. Again; is there really nothing new of less known to find about one of the most famous guys of the last decades?

• footage of influences. A lot of footage of movies Bowie apparently liked, like Voyage to the Moon, Nosferatu, Metropolis. However without source or any explanation or even context and in overabundance.

As a Bowie fan I appreciate that a story is not always linear, and I appreciate artistic & weird movies too. But this one felt too much like a lazily put together collage of footage that was most easily found.

It was always going to be hard to capture David Bowie's life and career in documentary format, as even the standard, talking head interviews + archive footage in chronological order would fail to capture all the important information in just over two hours. More troubling, however, is the fact that an ordinary documentary wouldn't do justice to who Bowie was/wasn't/might've been. He had an eccentric and still somewhat mysterious life, adopting different personas that all had some relation to his true self, yet never seemed to perfectly reflect it.

This all makes the fairly abstract approach in Moonage Daydream feel mostly appropriate. The only voiceover you get is from archival David Bowie interviews, and even then are they rarely presented in a way most interviews in documentaries are presented. Right near the end, there's a single shot of Bowie looking just over the camera, at the interviewer, and it's such a jarring moment because of how "ordinary" it looks.

Snippets of interviews are instead mixed with concert footage, archive/news footage, shots from music videos, photos, some animation, and clips from films - some of which starred Bowie. The visual style does feel close to relentless, but never becomes exhausting. For as much as I really liked Brett Morgen's Kurt Cobain documentary from 2015, that one was an assault on the senses at times (but likely intentionally so). Moonage Daydream is a little mellower and less in your face, but I think it lacks the hard-hitting emotion of Cobain: Montage of Heck.

For as great as Moonage Daydream is at capturing a good deal of Bowie's music and style, I don't think it's a slam-dunk, and part of that comes from it not making me feel as emotional as I'd expected it would. Maybe that was never the intention, and maybe instead, things were purposefully kept a little abstract. Still, it never went so far as to feel cold or too distant, and it remained engaging at a relatively lengthy 135 minutes (the perfect length; I think any longer and it may have become fatiguing).

I don't think all David Bowie fans will love this, because it doesn't always explain events clearly and spends a good deal of time on some of the less well-known periods of his life. But if you approach it with the knowledge that it's not an "ordinary" documentary the same way your average Bowie album is not an "ordinary" album, you should find a good deal to appreciate and enjoy.

There's much to like here. Visually interesting and it gave me a deeper appreciation of Bowie as a person. Some very sage quotes and sound bites. At one point I felt quite sad and thought Bowie was quite lonely/dissatisfied with life, but then the film ended with some brilliant statements from the man himself.

But. It was a bit of a mess with the story telling. Jumped about quite a bit and I can't help but feel it missed the last 15 years of his life? I also think it was too long and could've been easily less than 2 hours.

Interesting watch but not one I'd go back to. Definitely a one-time experience.

I really wanted to love this encapsulation of what was an extraordinary life of one of the most extraordinary artists to have graced the planet.

Though I entered the cinema prepared for Brett Morgan's unique style, and I appreciate the want of something a bit different, ultimately Bowie's brilliance and epic catalogue of songs held the film together. As other reviewers have noted, the constant musical and visual embellishments became an overworn and unnecessary distraction. It was as if Morgan harboured a misguided notion he needed to match his subject's artistry - a nigh impossible task. Only when Bowie was granted some unfiltered air to properly illustrate his talent and most profound thoughts did the movie fulfil its promise.

The other bone of contention was the chunks of Bowie's life and career all but overlooked. Young Americans and his unexpected soul departure was one of Bowie's greatest ch-ch-changes. LA wasn't just milk and coke. And whilst the 1990's and early 2000's may not have been golden years relatively speaking in terms of hits, this under appreciated creative period followed by the health related disappearing act and later the shock comeback, warranted more than a few snippets. As did the many interviews which demonstrated Bowie's wit and humour. Meanwhile, a false narrative has first wife Angie and son Duncan expunged from existence. But I guess all that would have dragged an already overlong production beyond the 3 hour mark.

Perhaps if you're a marginal fan, or a tragic like myself, Moonage Daydream is more likely to fall short than if you're somewhere in the middle.